Archive for the ‘Graf & Stift’ tag

1910 Graef & Stift Type 28/32 Double Phaeton loaned by Count Franz Harrach to the Archduke for his use in the June 28, 1914, motorcade through Sarajevo. Photo courtesy of the Museum of Military History in Vienna.

As we explained in that piece, very little definitive information on the vehicle itself exists in English, so we – committing to locate and present this data – acquired a copy of the 2014 book Das Auto von Sarajevo, which had been recommended to us by the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum (Museum of Military History) in Vienna, where the Phaeton is exhibited.

Putting my anything-but-authoritative German translation ability to the test, we’ve discovered that this automobile is not only a fascinating piece of tangible history, but a stunning example of advanced early automotive engineering…

It is now August of 1914, and it’s been just over a month since Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie, were assassinated by 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip in Sarajevo. At this point, Germany has invaded Belgium and the Battle of Tannenberg has just started. The world is at war.

Almost four years earlier, on December 15, 1910, Count Franz Harrach took delivery of his new Graef & Stift Type 28/32 Double Phaeton. The Count had paid 15,500 crowns (approximately $3,100) for the car, tires and instruments.

Rather than having his car’s coachwork done by Armbruster like most Graef & Stifts, Count Harrach chose Czerny to body his car. Czerny charged Count Harrach between 2,800 and 3,800 crowns ($560-$760) for the beautiful, primarily aluminum, coachwork. Upon registry with the government, the car received the license plate number A III-118.

This advanced vehicle came equipped with a water-cooled, 5.8 Liter, four-cylinder, T-head engine, with the cylinders cast in pairs and producing 32 horsepower at 1,400 RPM. The cylinders were mounted on an aluminum crankcase, and the Graef & Stift-designed four-barrel carburetor was placed in between the two cylinder pairs. The spark plugs were located above the hanging valves of the firing chambers.

Also perched atop the Phaeton’s engine cylinders were priming cups, whose terminology in German evocatively translates as “sizzling faucets.” These priming cups made starting the car easier by providing a means through which gasoline could be poured directly into the combustion chambers. Once primed, the Graef & Stift was started using a Bosch ignition system.

Advanced design was not limited to the engine bay, though, as the rest of the car was also exceptionally well engineered. The radiator to cool down the engine bay was licensed by Mercedes, while the headlamps placed in front of it were sophisticated carbide lamps manufactured by Carl Zeiss.

When it came time to stop, the car had been equipped with a braking system that incorporated a band-style transmission brake and water-cooling—an arrangement well suited to the torturous mountain terrain the car was engineered to operate in.

Getting started in the Alps is as challenging a prospect as stopping, so the Graef & Stift came with an early form of hill-start assist. The bottom of the car was manufactured with a metal prop that could be lowered using a cable, thereby preventing the car from rolling during shifting into gear.

Another quirk of the car is its secondary odometer, which is located in the right front wheel hub. It reads 8,596 kilometers, which is how far the car had traveled until its Imperial occupants met their fate.

As you recall, two assassination attempts were made that day, and the car shows signs of both. While the Archduke and his wife had escaped the first unscathed, shrapnel from the bomb nevertheless left a large dent on the left rear side of the car and damaged the rear-located gas tank.

Later in the day, as chauffeur Leopold Lojka struggled with the Graef & Stift to right the wrong turn he had taken, Gavrilo Princip stepped forward and fired two 9-millimeter rounds from his self-loading M1910/12 pistol at the Archduke. His first shot slipped through Ferdinand’s throat, while his second shot slammed into Sophie’s stomach, but only after it punched a hole through the aluminum of the right side of the car, just below the rear seat’s armrest.

The Graef & Stift has not been driven since kilometer 8,596. It remains in a preserved, but unrestored state in the Museum of Military History in Vienna—an automobile that stands as a physical testament to an event that changed the world forever.

We’ve all heard the story: One hundred years ago, on June 28, 1914, looking magisterial in his plumed regalia, Franz Ferdinand, Archduke and heir-apparent to the throne of the ailing Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his wife, Sophie, in her gleaming white dress, parasol hoisted, are moving by car through the streets of Sarajevo on a visit that is part official business and part 14th wedding anniversary.

Accompanied by General Oskar Potiorek, governor of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Lieutenant Colonel Count Franz von Harrach, owner of the car they are riding in, they are driven by Harrach’s chauffeur, Leopold Lojka. Thousands of people line the colorfully decorated Appel Quay as the six-car motorcade rolls past. It is a balmy Sunday.

Gavrilo Princip, just 19 years old, steps toward the car. An idealistic Serbian nationalist, he fires two shots from a pistol, and the Archduke and his wife are dead within moments. During the course of the next four years, more than 16 million people will be killed and more than 20 million will be wounded.

The aftershocks of the “war to end all wars” will lead to World War II, the development of the nuclear bomb, the Cold War and much of the violence in the Middle East. Though most scholars believe that, given the conditions at the time, World War I was largely inevitable – and along with it some form of all that followed – the mythic consciousness of much of humanity still points to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand as the birthplace of our troubled times.

And it all happened in a car…

The 1910 Gräf & Stift Bois de Boulogne tourer that Count von Harrach had taken delivery of on December 15, 1910, according to some sources, was outfitted with a four-speed transmission and a 32hp 5.8-liter four-cylinder T-head engine, with its cylinders cast in pairs. As builders of motorcars, Gräf & Stift had gotten its start in 1897 when the three Gräf brothers – who like so many pioneering vehicle engineers the world over had been successful in the bicycle business – constructed their first car, a voiturette based on a design by Josef Kainz. That seminal car is especially noteworthy for its front-engine, front-wheel-drive architecture, thought by many to be the first of its kind in the world.

Though Gräf & Stift became known at the time for producing heavier luxury-type automobiles, it was not surprising to find examples of these cars in the wilder hinterlands of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, as the machines made by the Viennese manufacturer were favored by the Imperial leadership right up until its fall in 1918. The company continued to build private cars until 1938, at which point it had already begun producing trucks and buses. Subsequently, mergers and takeovers lead to the gradual digestion of the concern, until “Gräf & Stift” no longer appears in the name of its descendent company, MAN Sonderfahrzeuge AG.

Back on that fateful day, the Gräf & Stift that the Archduke and his wife were riding in had already several times slipped by death unscathed as it traveled along a publicized route to an official reception at the Town Hall. Twice, the entourage had rolled safely past assassins concealed within the crowd, members of Young Bosnia who had been armed with bombs and pistols by the Black Hand – a secret militant organization intent on winning an independent state for the Slavic peoples.

At approximately 10:10 Nedeljko Čabrinović threw a bomb at the Gräf & Stift carrying the Archduke and his wife, either striking the side of the phaeton, as one would-be assassin recounted, or bouncing off the stacked folds of the retracted convertible top, according to another. In any case, the bomb, which had a time delay, fell to the road where it was passed over by the following car in the procession. It exploded, incapacitating the automobile and scattering shrapnel into the bystanders.

Some sources explain that the bomb had missed its mark because of the quick-thinking of chauffeur Leopold Lojka who, having seen something thrown at the car out of the corner of his eye, gunned the throttle and sped them away to safety. Still others report that the Archduke – whose foreign policy, with the benefit of historical hindsight, appears to us now to have been reform-minded and whose personal life even romantic – nobly stepped down from the Gräf & Stift to check on the soldiers who had been wounded in the car behind his.

After this, Lojka delivered his passengers to their destination at the city hall, where they were formally welcomed to Sarajevo and where Ferdinand, only slight ruffled, read his prepared speech. Seemingly confirming the accounts of his chivalrous tendencies, the story goes that afterwards he instructed General Oskar Potiorek that they were to forgo the next stop on the itinerary – their visit to the National Museum – and instead go to the hospital to visit those who had been wounded in the attack.

Again, what exactly happened next/last is a little unclear. Either Potiorek failed to instruct Lojka of the change in plans, or the chauffeur’s understanding of the layout of the city was incomplete. Whatever the case, the effect was the Gräf & Stift ended up once again in dangerous territory, and confused. When Lojka learned he had not gone the way the Archduke had wanted, he stopped the car. One could imagine how he felt – like he messed up and like it was entirely up to him to save them from the mortal danger he knew they – along with the entire future of the Empire – was in. Heart racing, Lojka struggled to work the gearbox into reverse while pulling and pulling at the unassisted steering wheel. The weight of the onlookers, of history, squarely on him.

Even though the car’s owner, Count von Harrach, had taken up a position on the running board from which he could attempt to shield the noble couple with his body, the seventh assassin did what he had set out to do. Later that day Herbert Sulzbach, a German soldier, wrote in a letter, “You feel that a stone has begun to roll downhill, and that dreadful things may be in store for Europe.” Indeed.

Remarkably, perhaps a little ironically, the 1910 Gräf & Stift Bois de Boulogne that the Archduke and his wife were shot in survives. It is on exhibit in the magnificent Heeresgeschichtliches Museum in Wien, Austria.

Photo by Volodymyr Osypov. Notice the chipped paint around the rear above the fender from the shrapnel and the bullet hole just below the hinge point of the convertible top.

And what of Leopold Lojka, the chauffeur? After the tragedy of June 28, 1914, it is said he was instructed to send three telegrams, one to Austro-Hungarian Emperor Franz Joseph, one to German Emperor Wilhelm II, and–no-doubt especially troubling–one to the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Sophie’s children. He testified at the trials of the Young Bosnia conspirators – several of whom surprisingly not only escaped the death penalty but actually survived the second world war to live long and meaningful lives. Lojka reportedly was discharged from the Army in 1920 and settled down in Czechoslovakia, where he became an innkeeper until his death on July 18, 1926.

* I don’t want to make this a regular feature of the Saturday Four-Links, but this is the third week in a row we’ve come across a stolen car while putting the Four-Links together. In this case, it’s a 1987 CitroÃ«n 2CV, taken late last month from Rossendale, Lancashire, UK. There is a reward.

* Even though our cash for clunkers program is over, Britain’s appears to still be going on, and one of the cars turned in was this 1958 Morris Minor (Britain’s program had no upper age limit for clunkers). The good news: It won’t be scrapped. The Hyundai dealership that took it in and the scrapyard that was authorized to crush it both decided it shouldn’t be destroyed. The bad news: Britain’s c4c legislation prevents it from being sold abroad or put back on the road, so it’ll become a museum doorstop, should some museum swoop in and save it. Still better than the alternative.